Symphony
by SabineLaGrande
Summary: Future AU. A night at the Metropolis Symphony makes Lex and Lana Luthor reexamine their relationship. LexLana.
1. I

A/N: This is a future AU, and takes into account canon developments through Lexmas.

* * *

I.

The point of the symphony, Lex learned at an early age, is not to listen to the music. Listening to music is something you do at home. The point of the symphony is to let other people know that you are the type of person who goes to the symphony.

And so he keeps a box, and he keeps Lana in it. He is always early; he always stops to talk to the old women whose names he is constantly forgetting who run the Symphony League. They always say soothing things about his dead father and give him big checks when elections roll around.

It's Mozart tonight. He doesn't like Mozart. Mozart sounds like everything else; well, that's not true. Everything else sounds like Mozart. Lex would rather be in his study with a bottle of scotch and Schubert.

They take their seats. The violinist comes out almost as soon as they sit down. During the opening sonata, her hand comes to rest on his. It's cold; it seems she's always cold. He takes it into his to warm it. It might be mistaken for affection by anyone else, but he knows this game.

During intermission, they go to the bar. He puts down his money and gets two glasses of less than adequate white wine. When Lana drinks hers off in two loud gulps, he's not even fazed. He scans the room; no one has noticed. He gets her another. His eyes are an admonishment, but she rolls hers in response. From over his shoulder, someone calls for the senator. They both turn, faces lit with false smiles.

They come back early from intermission. In one of the boxes across from them, Pete Ross comes in late with his girlfriend. They give every appearance of being completely in love. He starts to lean over and tell her, but she's lost in the music. It was always easy for her to lose herself, he thinks bitterly, first to Clark, then to him. The thought brings up an old, sharp pain, one that he hoped he had lost.

Suddenly, he's tired of all this. He gets up, collects his coat, and walks out of the box. A moment later, Lana follows. He stops, offering his arm to her. She takes it, and they go.

They won't talk about it. They don't talk anymore.


	2. II

II.

Lana used to be the type who went for the music, for the thrill of knowing that each performance was different, fresh, vital. She was the kind that sat in the student seats in the far back and felt privileged to be there.

She hates Mozart. Her tastes run to Berlioz and Satie, the kind of music that goes with smoking too much opium and living free in Paris. She's not paying attention to the music; instead, she watches the performer. The violinist leans and sways with the music, letting herself flow out through it. It comes to Lana that she used to know how to do that. Now she's gotten used to dispassion; she sits at her telescope and silently studies the stars, then she comes home late and crawls into bed next to Lex. She's taken to staying late even when she doesn't need to; there's something in the stars that calms her.

At intermission, the bar is crowded as usual; and as usual, the wine tastes as if it came from a box. After she swigs the first glass, Lex gives her the same reprimanding look he always gives her when she drinks in public. It's not as if she doesn't understand. She is fully aware that he has an image to uphold, and one tabloid photo of Mr. Luthor's supposed drunkard wife could sink his next election bid. She knows this, but she doesn't care. The tabloid press is conspicuously absent, however, and he relents.

Their wordless fight is cut short when Lex is hailed from somewhere behind them. When they turn, Lana is indistinguishable from Lex, all million dollar smiles and charming words. She lets one of Lex's business associates stare at her chest for a while, until Lex notices and carts her off back to the box.

Lana takes her seat, feeling tipsy and tired. The violinist is joined by the full orchestra, and they immediately begin heavily plodding through something clearly intended to be light and airy. It gives her a headache almost as soon as it starts. She rests her head on one hand and studies the bassoonist.

In the second movement, Lana sees Lex start to tell her something, then stop. She wishes he would interrupt. At first it annoyed her, but she secretly started to enjoy it. It made her feel like she was a part of something, even if the Metropolitan social scene was something she thought she hated.

That was why she had married him, wasn't it? He always made her feel as if she was needed, an essential part of whatever he was trying to do. First it was the Talon, then Genevieve, then the spaceship, and it just kept spiraling out from there. Lex told her things no one else was willing to tell her- about Clark, mostly. Lex's version of the world wasn't pat like everyone else's. He didn't pretend that everything was all right, and most importantly, he never lied to her.

So she married him. It didn't seem to shock anyone except Chloe and Clark, which didn't particularly bother her- they didn't seem to have time for her anyway. In a stunning display of dramatics, Chloe had, characteristically, accused her of "turning to the Dark Side."

She ignored them, and life wore on; but the thrill of being Lana Luthor wore off quickly. Lana began to understand what it really means to be a necessary part of Lex's world; it means playing by his rules, following his orders, living his dreams. Already Lana could tell that Lex was becoming remarkably like his father.

But she loved him. She supposed that was her mistake; she had fallen for the man himself. Blinded by the truth and comfort she imagined in him, she had let herself become his pawn. Lana resolved to stay in the elaborate box he had created for her; she has always been one to believe in lost causes.

Lex leaves suddenly in the third movement. Without question, she goes with him. It doesn't matter; she hasn't been listening. She never listens anymore.


	3. III

III.

Her coffee was cold, and her mascara was running. This was, consulting the growing list in her PDA, the eighth time this month he had stood her up.

Lana didn't need this. She had homework, and meetings, and anything better to do than sit and wait for her truant boyfriend. She angrily wiped at the make-up streaking her cheeks before sending Clark a message she knew she'd regret. Scratch that. She wasn't going to regret it, not this time.

And as it had six out of the seven other times, the chair across from her scraped backwards, and he sat down.

"Again?" Lex asked. She nodded, afraid that, if she opened her mouth right now, nothing would come out but vitriol. "You don't deserve this."

"You know what?" she said, smiling to keep the tears from coming. "I don't. I didn't deserve it any of the other times, either." Her voice became bitter. "He thinks he has to be everything to everyone except me."

Now her tears flowed freely. Before she could wipe them away, Lex was there with his handkerchief. The feeling of warm fingers through soft silk calmed her; her tears stopped.

"You deserve so much better," he told her in a soft whisper.

This conversation was growing commonplace. She realized Lex was leading her, but she didn't care. Lex was there. Lex, for all his busy schedule, was always there for her. Lex was…

"Let's get out of here," Lex said, standing up and holding out a hand to her. She took it and stood, and, unexpectedly, Lex pulled her into a warm hug. And more unexpectedly, she found herself clinging to him desperately.

"Help me, Lex," she said in his ear. He whispered something soothing and unintelligible and pulled her closer.

Paris, months later, in a little café in Montmartre near Sacré Coeur. It was loud and full of too many people speaking too much English, but she loved it anyway.

"Everyone I have ever loved has left me," he told her, "except you." Lex took a box out of his pocket and held it to her with both hands, as if presenting an offering. "I want you to be my wife." He opened it. "I want you stay with me forever."

Lana breathed in. Her heart stopped, and the world swirled down to just the two of them. This wasn't what she had been expecting from her life, though she didn't know exactly what it was that she had been expecting. This would be a new beginning, a step away from everything she'd ever been, with someone that she wasn't always sure she knew. Lex could be so dark, so unpredictable; but there was so much good in him, drawing Lana in more and more. Could she take it all, the darkness and the light? Could she do this?

Lana breathed out. "Yes."

And as Lana packs her bags to go to back to Smallville on the pretext of a business trip, the beginning is all she can think about. She can't yet think of it as a mistake, nor can she consider that this might be the end. She loads her things into one of the cars and gets in, waving away Lex's driver. The radio is set to the classical station. It grates her nerves; everything just seems to sound like Mozart. She switches it off.

She gets to the Talon in the early afternoon. Martha, probably the last person left in Smallville who understands, gives her a warm hug and the key to her old apartment, recently left vacant. Lana lays herself down on the bed, and it's not until then that the tears start to come.


	4. IV

IV.

Lex needs, as he as always needed, to examine things, to break them apart and nail them down. He needs to understand progressions and trends. So he sits at the desk of his cold Metropolis office tracing out the pattern of his marriage, how it started and how it is… he can't say to himself that it is ending. Not yet. How it goes on.

It was the dream- vision, hallucination, whatever it had been- that finally decided it. From the moment he woke up, his path had been set. He would have it all- power, influence, and Lana. If he couldn't rise to meet her, he was going to orchestrate her fall. If he couldn't protect her by making the right decisions, he was going to do it by making all the wrong ones.

It had been stupidly easy to win her. He had let Clark do most of it for him. With his penchant for privacy, Clark ever so slowly pushed her away. Lex simply waited in the wings with coffee and commiseration, drawing her in. True, he watched the both of them- he had always been watching Clark, that was old habit- to predict his moment. If it had been done by anyone else, it would have been stalking. But when Lex Luthor watched someone without her consent, it was strategic surveillance.

The courtship had been planned carefully. The plan, which involved sweeping Lana off her feet and becoming her hero, fell apart within approximately two weeks. He could manipulate anyone else in the world, but it only hurt him when he tried it on her. He loved her more than he had loved anyone since his mother died. And the best, most unexpected part of the whole thing was that she loved him too, really loved him, not his money or his power, with or without hair. He found that he couldn't help but tell her the truth.

The meeting with Chloe and Clark after their return from Paris? Now that had been planned. He hadn't talked to either of them much since he and Lana had begun dating. Clark still made regular visits to accuse him of every crime to occur in a hundred mile radius. Chloe was becoming just another faceless member of the press, the kind of person Lex paid lots of money to have kept away from him.

Still, Lana had at least made an attempt to keep them as friends, and Lex acquiesced. It was yet another opportunity. He dressed her to meet them himself, covering her from neck to toe, wrapping her in the same fine fabrics and rich colors he preferred. The effect was stunning. She looked at least five years older, and… powerful, somehow.

They were late to dinner, her hair slightly mussed, his lips swollen, a calculated maneuver. Chloe wasn't fazed. Lex had always liked that about her; anyway, it wasn't meant for her. Clark looked like someone just kicked his puppy into traffic, though Lex noted with pleasure that he and Lana were chilly to each other.

So it passed. Clark and Lana stopped talking, for all he knew, and Chloe only ever called when she thought she could get inside information. And all was happy.

Ah, but that was where black doubt started creeping in. It was too good. She was making him a better person. Was he going to go down the right- wrong?- road? It seemed so clear at the time, when their romantic, fiery stage was fading; the only way to keep her safe was to keep her away. The only way to keep her away was to hurt her. Not physically- he'd rather die. Push her away emotionally; give himself reasons to keep her back. She had only damned herself more when she started talking to Clark again, probably out of loneliness. That had added jealousy to the mix.

Eventually, Lex came to use her like he used everybody else. He manipulated her and ordered her about and withheld the truth. It hurt, badly, but in time, it hardened him. Some flailing part of him knew he was a bad, possibly an evil person. But that same part of him, that tiny voice that was decreasing, knew he could turn it back. But did that mean…

Lex's head is throbbing. He has given up trying to understand, because every explanation makes him a bastard or a fool. His past is full of discord, and the only theme is Lana.

His hand hovers over the untouched bottle of scotch on the credenza, but he reaches and grabs the phone instead. He dials the number of his driver.

"Vincent? I need a car immediately."


	5. V

V.

Lex opens the door of the apartment over the Talon without knocking. Lana is standing at the counter in the kitchen staring down a cup of coffee.

"What are you doing here?" Lana asks before she turns, as if she's been expecting this. Her face is red from crying, her mascara darkening the hollows under her eyes.

"I came to talk to you," he says, more roughly than he intended.

"You've been drinking," she says flatly, even though she knows it's not true.

"I can't afford enough alcohol to forget myself enough to let you go."

"Spare me," she says, and makes to leave. He stops her, putting his hands on her shoulders. The suddenness of the gesture surprises her, and she looks up into his eyes in confusion.

"I had a dream." Lana rolls her eyes at this. "Just listen. It was you, and me, and we were happy, really happy, even though we were broke and my father had cut us off."

The words are tumbling haphazardly out of his mouth; and the light is back in his eyes, the one Lana has long missed, the one he never could fake.

"We had a little boy, and a Christmas tree-"

"You don't even like Christmas-"

"I lied. We had friends, and we had a baby girl, and she looked just like you. But then…" He takes a deep breath. "You died. You died because I couldn't save you. And I knew that I had to keep us from that, even though it was the happiest place I've ever been."

"It doesn't excuse what I've done to you, and I wish it could explain. And," he sighed raggedly, almost panting, "Lana, I'm a fool. I hurt you because I thought it would protect us. I thought if we weren't happy, I couldn't lose you. I should have told you years ago, and I shouldn't have wasted both our lives over a fantasy."

Lana is crying silently. Angry things keep leaping into her throat, but they all die away when she opens her mouth. Common sense says that she should scream, throw him out, not accept any reason or excuse. But she can't. She doesn't even want to. She breathes in deeply, calming herself, pulling up her confidence.

"Lex, look at us. We're not those people. We never will be. Even if your dream was right, we've both done enough wrong to protect us forever. If you keep worrying about keeping what's yours, you're going to lose it."

Lana looks him right in the eye. "I love you. I'll never be the one to change that, but you almost were. No more secrets," she says, and it hurts Lex right down in his core. That's what he's been swearing to her for years; has he ever really done it? "No more following omens. No more half-baked plans for my protection." She smiles widely despite herself, and Lex laughs. Lana takes him into her arms. "I don't care if you try to take over the world or give up and go sell used cars. I just want to be part of you. That's all I've ever wanted."

"I love you," he sighs. Lex feels her nod against his chest, and words fail. He kisses her on the top of the head, holding her against him tightly.

After a few moments, she pulls back and looks up at him. "Is this what passes for a happy ending?" Lana asks sincerely.

"No," he tells her, smiling. "A new beginning." She nods, and Lex knows that she understands.


End file.
